3Twenty10

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) standard is a new standard for deep green building that models itself on trees in nature, insisting that a building meets all its own resource needs such as energy, water, heat. It also demands that a building achieves waste neutralisation requirements from within its own site, and that it is healthy and, crucially, equitable and beautiful. Meeting this standard will be a challenge.

The baseline project now under construction in Dublin will be Ireland’s first zero CO2 public housing built from low CO2, natural materials. It will meet Ireland’s zero CO2 benchmark for housing (2013) two years early.

What would it take to raise the design and construction of a project of 37 public housing units and associated facilities (such as in the one under construction now) up to meet the standards set in the Living Building Challenge?
What additional time, space, money and knowledge would be required ? What norms, regulation and procedures would have to be changed ?
What benefit would it bring in terms of resources knowledge, well being and delight in and of itself and when scaled up to be a new /next standard for buildings. ?